Sunshine

Good morning. It's Friday, May 30, 2014, and here are your seven clicks:

1. Far from new, unfortunately, but these are always such jarring, unsettling numbers: Across Florida, just under 60 percent of third-graders tested at the proficient level or better in reading and math. (The chart in that link, the North Pinellas chart, is all messed up and tough to read, and I don't know why, and I'm sorry.) Meanwhile, in the paper I get where I live in St. Pete, on the chart I'm looking at — I can't find a link; I don't know why, and I'm sorry — there are schools, in the poorer, blacker areas of the city, in which basically almost all the kids can't read or do math. They're not even 10 years old, and it's already over. They have no chance. Again, this isn't news, but it is still — it is always — an outright outrage.

3. Says Dan Ruth: Now it seems making it from one curb to another is an urban version of Survivor — particularly in Florida and especially in Tampa Bay, which is now second in the nation for pedestrian deaths.

According to the National Complete Streets Coalition, 874 pedestrians were killed on Tampa Bay roads between 2003 and 2012 and because of the relatively low rate of walkers — just 1.6 percent of people walk to work — the "pedestrian death index" for 2008 to 2012 was the second highest in the country at 190.13.

Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater lagged only behind the Orlando-Kissimmee area, with a 244.28 pedestrian death index.

About the blog

For the past year, readers have come to the State You're In pages in our monthly Floridian magazine to feast on our facts, to lap up our lyrics, to tarry with our Time Capsule. And then they were done, and there was nothing to do but wait for the next month. Didn't seem right that we were apart for so long. So we on the SYI desk have decided to go digital. Written by Michael Kruse, it will provide you a constant supply of signature State You're In news and commentary. Because we were meant to be together. Every day.